UBBDev is the modification community that's behind the UBB; most of the beta testers have been active developers at UBBDev. At UBBDev we develop new features and customizations for the UBB; heck, even Rick and Charles Capps have posted over there (CC being the ex UBB.C lead programmer).
Also, it's prudent for me to specify, IRC is free, thats the whole idealism behind it is that it's a well established protocol with millions of free servers; you shouldn't ever pay for anything to use IRC.
As the the pJIRC addon at UBBDev, it's a free java irc client which integrates into your UBB.Threads7 installation; i was merely suggesting that you look at it on how to edit the title bar to show the chat link; but it is a rather well-used addition to the UBB.
